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DO NOT book flights through SmartFares! Pay the extra $50 to book directly from the airline!

I booked 2 roundtrip flights to Asia using this service bacause they had the best deals online for $1300 total. The airline ended up not letting me on the plane because of Visa issues (another story), which wasn't SmartFare's fault, but when I contacted them to try to help, they instead tried to use my desparation to find a way to still go on my vacation that I had been planning for months against me and scam me out of money.

First, to change the flights, I could not go through the airline themselves. They said I had to go through Smartfares since I booked it through them, and when I tried to call the airlines, they said they coudn't even talk to the other part of the company that deals with SmartFares; so I was forced to deal with them directly.

When I contacted SmartFares to change the flight, they said that the airline had a $325 per ticket change fee, which I assume was the truth (who knows now), and that I also had to pay the difference in what I paid for my flight and what the flight was now, which was not ideal, but I was willing to do it (another reason to deal with the airline directly). The scam (that I know of) came when they looked at the "price difference" for these tickets. They told me that the cheapest flights they could find in the timeframe that I was looking to travel were for $2500, which meant I would have to pay the $650 airline change fee ($325 x 2) plus the difference of $1200, which totaled $1850 before tax.

That would make sense if the new ticket fee they quoted me was accurate. When I looked on Google Flights myself, I saw that there were tickets going for $1450 total. When I asked the SmartFares guy about it, he said that the ticket prices on Google Flights are incorrect and when I actually tried to book the flights, it would be unavailable. So I proceeded to book that ticket price through United Airlines and it was still giving me the same price and they were still available. When I asked him about it, he said it was wrong and it wouldn't let me book them. I asked him again if he could give me those prices that I was seeing on Google Flights and on United Airline's website, but he said he couldn't, and he stuck to his story saying they weren't accurate.

So I booked the tickets through United Airlines for $1450, and I totally lost the $1300 I had paid SmartFares with them providing me absolutely no service. I gave them $1300 for nothing. They weren't going to even think about repaying me despite this, and instead tried to scam me out of more money.

DO NOT book flights through SmartFares if you want any type of customer service or consideration when bad things happen. They have no common decency.